CJR Daily

The New York Times's disturbing story on Newark Mayor Cory Booker's ties with Silicon Valley is what 21st century corruption looks like. Booker, the leading Democratic candidate for an open New Jersey Senate seat, has been moonlighting as chairman of yet another social video startup thing—one with the backing of plutocrat patrons like Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, Oprah, and Reid...

Since Wednesday, Patch employees have been waiting for news of layoffs rumored to come coupled with the announcement of a strategy shift at at the massive hyperlocal. In a Friday morning conference call, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong delayed the layoff announcements, instead announcing a change in strategy to focus only on the best performing Patch sites. "If it doesn't sink...

When it comes to factchecking, sooner or later, everyone's a critic. And those criticisms come mainly in two flavors. One line of attack holds that the factcheckers at PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and their sister sites are slaves to semantics, issuing narrow technical rulings that ignore some more fundamental truth. After all, politicians know how to deceive us with carefully worded cant....

This month, CJR presents "Required Skimming," a daily miniguide to our staffers' beats and obsessions. If we overlooked any of your must-read destinations, please tell us in the comments. --The Walrus: The Canadian answer to such high-end American magazines as The New Yorker and Harper's, The Walrus combines a commitment to longform feature journalism with a vaguely irreverent tone reminiscent...

Twenty-one years ago, in 1992, former Washington Post managing editor Robert Kaiser typed out a famously prescient memo describing his conclusions after attending an Apple-organized conference on the future of "multimedia." Kaiser urged the Post to be at the forefront of the oncoming digital revolution. And at Washingtonpost.com, where I worked from 1997 to 2003, we made some noble efforts....

In July, a month before Germany's controversial copyright law requiring search engines to pay for featuring snippets of content was set to take effect, Google sent German newspaper publishers a letter asking whether they wanted to opt in to Google News.  Rather than prepare to pay publishers when the law took effect on July 31August 1, Google, which dominates the...

Top brass at AOL's hyperlocal network, Patch, have been saying since at least the beginning of 2013 that they aim to achieve profitability by the end of this year. And during Wednesday's second-quarter earnings call, CEO Tim Armstrong announced that Patch would undergo some drastic cuts to reach that goal in addition to a 25-percent decrease in expenses already instituted...

Let's say you've suddenly found yourself working for a boss who's more steeped in tech culture than in journalism. As the veteran of a publication that was founded by men with a tech-startup mentality, I can attest that there's bound to be some miscommunication. To help ease the transition, I've compiled some sample questions you may start hearing around the...

Writing about newspapers and the Internet, Matthew Yglesias manages to be both crushingly obvious and wrong at the same time. Quite a feat. Here's his headline: Online News Hasn't Killed Newspapers--It's the Death of Advertising And lede: Hearing some coverage of the Washington Post's sale on radio and television over the past couple of days, I heard a lot of...

This month, CJR presents "Required Skimming," a daily miniguide to our staffers' beats and obsessions. If we overlooked any of your must-read destinations, please tell us in the comments. The Nerdist: A warm, witty geekfest, with host Chris Hardwick roping in everyone from Billy Crystal to Buzz Aldrin as guests. Expect chatter about Starfleet, Jedi, superheroes, and hobbits, as well...

I was optimistic that the publication of Peggy Orenstein's fabulous New York Times Magazine piece on pinkwashing and the dysfunction of breast cancer culture in April would change the conversation and diminish misleading coverage of the disease. Apparently not. Wednesday morning, Slate urged its readers to "Reconsider the Mammogram" (with no apparent apologies to David Foster Wallace). The piece, about...

For the Discovery Channel, Shark Week, an annual week devoted to shark-related programming, is prime time for ratings and, supposedly, a moderate win for science. After all, underneath all the gore, a week of documentaries about marine life is presumably a vehicle drumming up interest in science, right? But Discovery aired a program on Sunday chronicling the search for a...

Steve Coll, the new dean of Columbia's Journalism School, spent 20 years as a reporter and editor at The Washington Post, serving as the paper's managing editor from 1998-2004. CJR spoke to him about the sale of the Post to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. What are some of the bigger strategic mistakes the Post made in recent years?...

This month, CJR presents "Required Skimming," a daily miniguide to our staffers' beats and obsessions. If we overlooked your favorite too cool for school food mag, please tell us in the comments. Lucky Peach The patient zero of cool-eats, David Chang's quarterly journal is perhaps the only food magazine that could successfully run a gender issue (and...

I'm a huge admirer of Jeff Bezos, and the way in which he has managed to dodge the biggest pitfall facing the managers of public companies: rather than maximize short-term profits, he instead has concentrated -- with enormous success -- on building long-term value. Amazon is now worth about $140 billion, or more than 500 Washington Posts -- more, indeed,...

In a boffo performance that won't come soon to a theater near you, Nicolas Cage appeared before the Nevada Senate Finance Committee early in May to support a state tax credit for film production in Nevada. The actor, who lives in Las Vegas and won a best actor Oscar for his performance in the 1995 film, Leaving Las Vegas, delivered...

In his "Stories I'd like to see" column, journalist and entrepreneur Steven Brill spotlights topics that, in his opinion, have received insufficient media attention. This article was originally published on Reuters.com. 1. How the Guardian protects America's national security: Last week, the Guardian released another Edward Snowden-procured red-hot document--a "top secret," 32-page National Security Agency training manual for a program...

The Web is still reeling from the news that The Washington Post is being sold to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for $250 million. Within minutes of the announcement, Twitter feeds lit up with the inevitable jokes about Bezos' ubiquitous online retail company: Jeff Bezos buys Washington Post. News to be delivered within 3-5 days.— Albert Brooks (@AlbertBrooks) August 5, 2013...

FAIRWAY, KS -- On Feb. 8, Amy Meyer, a 25-year-old activist, recorded cell-phone video of activities at a slaughterhouse in a Salt Lake City suburb. Eleven days later she was informed, much to her surprise, that she was being prosecuted for a Class B misdemeanor under a new Utah state law prohibiting "agricultural operation interference"--an offense that could mean up...

No one in their right mind claims to know how this is all going to go, but all agree that the landmark purchase of The Washington Post by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos ushers in a brave new world for the American press. Billionaire John Henry just bought the Boston Globe for a song and will fold it into his sports...